


the principles of cruelty

by Ias



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, M/M, One Word Prompt Meme, Torture, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4989493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sauron's history is written on fragments of bone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the principles of cruelty

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a one-sentence exercise that became not-one-sentence, and ended up in a style I haven't really attempted before. Hopefully it worked out. 
> 
> Loads of love to [Iza](piyo-13.tumblr.com) for betaing this fic.

*****

You were never innocent; you were born in the void and that darkness lives in you still.

*****

Each time you saw his deeper shadow darkening the door of Aule’s hall, you would keep your face carefully blank; but your hands would twitch over their work like the spinning legs of a spider.

*****

You have spent enough time in the forge to know that, above all else, fire consumes.

*****

Melkor cuts you free of the Valar as cleanly as the stroke of an axe. You tell yourself that the break means freedom, that you feel no resentment for how easily they parted with you.

*****

He tells you to kneel, and you defy him. You only do this once.

*****

Melkor moves as a predator, a beast comfortable in the knowledge that its jaws can crush bone; you move as the bird which pulls ticks from the lion’s ear. In a way, it resembles loyalty.

*****

He clasps your shoulder once, the heat of battle fever still on his brow—you’re so grateful for that show of affection that it makes you forget why you would want to leave.

*****

At other times, the frown ghosts his face before you’ve even begun to speak. Underneath your words, other sentiments writhe like maggots: _What do you want from me? When did you grow tired of me? What must I do to appease you?_

*****

You peel open the bodies, searching for whatever truth or joy Melkor finds in ripping them apart. At the end this is what you’ve accumulated: mounds of dead flesh, flies, frustrations, nausea, a coating of grime on your skin that you can’t seem to scrub away.

*****

The story of your life is one of discovering that there is always a new way you can abase yourself, there is always further to sink.

*****

When you’re standing at his side, the thrill of power crackling around you is enough to make you think he can protect you, that he _would_ protect you.

*****

Maedhros begs you for death, and you decide to meet him halfway.

*****

After doing this for long enough, you have heard every possible combination of words they can use to beg for mercy, and the tediousness of it makes you cut all the deeper.

*****

You know Melkor’s scars better than he does himself—they’re the only places on his body he allows you to touch, and you worship them with trembling hands and a brand to cauterize the rot.

*****

You never particularly thought he cared for you; that is, at least, what you tell yourself when the evidence becomes irrefutable.

*****

What more can you do when your god does not want you, but find a new one in yourself?

*****

You have decided that you are the one who will make all this right; it’s so simple, saving the world, if only they would just listen, just stop struggling—

*****

The ash of your smothered forges settles on your lips as you watch Angband crumble. It tastes the way you thought his lips might.

*****

It’s the tilt of Eonwe’s mouth that does it, the trace of a sneer that pares the meat from all your accomplishments until they are nothing, until it was all _for_ nothing. In that moment you decide to prove him wrong.

*****

There is, of course, no going back. Blood fills your footsteps wherever you go; the greater injustice now would be not to complete your work.   

*

You rebuild—a new plan arises. Somehow, it’s easier without him. No chaos to temper your surgical precision, no blemish on the new face you pull over your own.

*****

Deceiving Celebrimbor is easy. You need only remember and replicate Melkor’s seduction, the ways he twisted you like molten metal beneath his hands.

*****

The weight of the Ring on your finger is enough to buckle your knees, to crack the stones beneath your feet—you feel your own malice reflected back at you like a strange face behind dark glass, and you know your greatest works have only just begun.

*****

Very easy to forget the way the bile used to rise in your throat, back when you were still testing the limits of your fledgling cruelty—the blood welling under the knife is familiar now, and the person you used to be is strange and disturbing.

*****

You’re not sure where these mad lunges inside of you came from, but they stab out through your hands and they make you inflict pain where you had planned on composure. The elf lord wasn’t supposed to die, but you suppose in the end he would thank you for it.

*****

You stand on the bow on the ship with Númenorian chains on your wrists, and you cannot help but think this is the closest to Valinor you’ve been in millennia. You turn your face away.

*****

You wonder if Melkor would be satisfied by how quickly you have the Kings of Men at your feet. For all the offerings of red, ragged flesh your followers leave on his altar, it is you that hungers for sacrifice.

*****

This is your god, you tell them, and his hands will protect you from death—but how many little deaths must you suffer yourself, to smear his empty image with blood he will never taste?

*****

The face carved into the dark stone of the temple walls is a perfect replica. You could have created it without sight, without touch; if you were broken down piece by piece, the image of that face would be the last thing left of you.

*****

 “I loved you,” you say aloud, and the silence of the empty air cuts deeper than scorn.

*****

That face looks down on you from the temple walls as the great wave crushes your form to nothing.

*****

In this death that is not death, there is peace—in the spaces between the stars, you can almost feel him.

*****


End file.
